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Temperatures, Clock Rates & Overclocking
Overclocking
This card's overclocking potential is terrific, so long as you're willing to tolerate a 2500 RPM maximum fan speed. But even if you don't crank the fans up that high, you'll still enjoy the highest frequencies we've seen from an air-cooled GeForce GTX 1080 Ti inside of a closed case or mounted on an open test bench. By rigging the silicon lottery on your behalf via binning, MSI ensures we're impressed.
Using MSI's Afterburner Extreme software, increasing the power target to 116%, and slightly raising the GPU voltage, we were even able to touch 2088 MHz for a brief stretch (or as long as GP102 stayed under 40°C).
More moderate settings allowed us to hit 2063 MHz at a 65% fan duty cycle without adding voltage. We only wonder how tight of a frequency range MSI's binning process is able to ensure from one Lightning Z sample to another.
Temperatures & Clock Frequencies
The following table includes starting and end values for our temperature and GPU Boost clock rates.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Start Value | End Value |
|---|---|---|
| Open Test Bench | ||
| GPU Temperature | 40°C | 65°C |
| GPU Frequency (Open Bench) | 2012 MHz | 1962 MHz |
| Ambient Temperature | 22°C | 22°C |
| Closed Case | ||
| GPU Temperature | 42°C | 68°C |
| GPU Frequency (Closed Case) | 2000 MHz | 1949 to 1962 MHz |
| Temperature Inside Case | 25°C | 39°C |
| Overclocking (Open Test Bench) | ||
| GPU Temperature (2500 RPM Fans) | 28°C | 48°C |
| GPU Frequency | 2088 MHz | 2063 to 2076 MHz |
| Ambient Temperature | 22°C | 22°C |
Temperatures vs. Frequency
Here's a closer look at the data over 15 minutes, during our sample's warm-up phase.
IR Image Analysis For The Board's Back
As our pictures show, the area around the VRM and some of the memory modules endure the highest temperatures, even if all of our measurements are completely acceptable.
But this also shows that the heat pipe attached to the backplate's inner side is rather pointless. Instead of trying to pull additional heat from the already-cool GPU, it would have been more beneficial to target the VRMs instead.
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